


Yellow Eyes

by Not_You



Category: Watchmen (Comic), Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Childhood Memories, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Gross, M/M, Nightmares, Past Child Abuse, Rorschach Has Issues, Sharing a Bed, terrible nightmare images from the fucked up mind of rorschach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 19:41:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10928700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_You/pseuds/Not_You
Summary: Rorschach has a nightmare and Dan is comforting.





	Yellow Eyes

_His feet are like little ghosts, picking their way over empty bottles, all hard and round and horrible like cockroaches. He hates cockroaches, and it's so hard to find anything to eat that they haven't gotten into. They're always in the sugar. He's creeping down the tiny hallway to the kitchen, hoping his mother's door isn't open. He doesn't like it when they can possibly see him. The odds are good that they're asleep, but-- And then the thing comes shambling out. It's his mother, the worst monster his little mind can come up with, and even though he must be only about five, with his little bruised broom-straw legs and ghost feet, she's so much more bloated than she really was, then. So much whiter and more like some toxic fungus. She's dead but walking, her mouth and throat and the top of her huge chest eaten away. Worse even than this wet, raw cavern of necrotic flesh is what glints in the darkness. Two yellow eyes, flat and cruel and utterly alien. The eyes of the Thing he has only seen reflected in her eyes when it takes her over. The times he thinks he's going to die, like when she held his head underwater for a minute and a half, barely containing his frantic, silverfish struggles. The times when she scares herself and actually holds him afterward, and the times that scar. It's ripping its way free of her, and he knows he can't outrun it._

"Rorschach!"

Walter can't help but realize that he must not be in his mother's house, and comes back to himself. He's sitting up in a wide, soft bed that smells like Daniel, in a halo of the soft, gold light of Daniel's reading lamp. He's shaking and covered in anxious sweat, and he notes that the bedclothes are all on the floor, as well as one pillow. Daniel's arms are around him, and the his gratitude for their warm strength and kindness is so sudden and sweet that it's a little like being stabbed, and he scrambles into his lap, whimpering and locking his wiry, freckled arms around Daniel's neck, pressing his face to his shoulder. He stays there a while. His galloping heart slows, and takes his strained panting with it. Some of the tension goes out of his arms, since Daniel is still there and a quick glance at the nightstand assures him that he's awake. You can't actually read print in dreams, and the spine of Daniel's book says, The Two Towers quite clearly. Daniel is gently rubbing his back, murmuring for him to hush, that it was just a nightmare.

Walter shivers. "Mostly memory." He croaks, and Daniel reaches for the glass of water he keeps by the bed without missing a beat. Walter drinks gratefully, using both hands to hold the cup like a small child as he leans on Daniel's chest. Daniel rubs Walter's hair, and he is suddenly so glad that he took off his mask.

"Wanna talk about it?" 

"Yes." He blinks. He usually knows what's going to come out of his mouth. This is one of a handful of noncombat exceptions to the rule.

"Okay." And that's all Daniel says, letting a long silence spin out. He's willing to wait, and Walter's chest hurts with how much he loves him for it.

"Mother." He says, and shudders again. He coughs. "It was about my mother." And he tells Daniel. 

About how his mother hurt him and the times where it was even worse because it was like she couldn't help it, like she was somehow someone even worse than her usual self. Daniel plucks the glass from his white-knuckled hands before anything can happen to it, and because Walter is shivering with cold now, kisses the top of his head before going as quickly as he can to pick up the blankets and the pillow. He puts the blankets over Walter and crawls in beside him, tugging him in against his chest and holding him tight. He tells Walter how sorry he is, and because he actually means it, because Walter knows it hurts him too, and that he would go back in time to rescue him if he could, it helps. Daniel's words and his fingers laced with Walter's help him tell about the next part, about the horrible way she died and how he was only glad. He tries to explain the tangled way that he's bothered by not being bothered by not being bothered by it, and Daniel hushes him softly.

"It was all her own fault, baby. That you didn't care." He strokes his hair. "You were born ready to love her." Walter nods, because it's true and it hurts, and he turns in Daniel's arms to hide his face in his chest, letting those careful, blunt, mechanic's hands work his back in slow circles. "You never did any wrong by her, sweetheart. You didn't. If you could forgive her for all that, you'd be Jesus."

"And you'd have to kill me." Walter mutters, muffled, and it takes Daniel a horrified second to realize that it's a particularly tasteless joke and laugh until he's breathless, holding Walter tight.

"Rorschach, I swear to god I will _make_ you celebrate Passover with me, and I'm not even sure I remember how." He smiles, and kisses him softly. "Think you can sleep again?" And Walter nods, suddenly feeling tired. He glances at the clock and realizes that they've only been asleep for about two hours. He yawns and snuggles in so close to Daniel that he can barely breathe, putting one leg over his hip. "All right if I turn off the light?" Daniel murmurs, and Walter nods again, moving with Daniel as he stretches to reach the lamp, and pressing against him in the sudden dark. Daniel wraps around him, cradling Walter as he falls asleep again, this time into a dream of owls that reminds him that not everything with yellow eyes is bad.


End file.
